15 May 2013 7:11 PM

Britain's spying trade has become simply a PR industry

At what point did the spying
trade turn into a branch of the public relations industry?

I blame Alastair
Campbell, who, confronted with the necessity of selling an unpopular war,
redefined the Secret Intelligence Service as an auxiliary spin machine. The
proper role of Britain’s spies, Campbell maintained, was to supply propaganda
material for the Prime Minister to feed to the media.

It is not clear
that the chieftains of MI6 were wrong when they obediently followed Campbell’s
instructions and tried to make it look as if they really believed Saddam
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

No good in
upsetting the government, what with all those salaries to be paid and lots of
cooks and cleaners to keep going at that silly headquarters in Vauxhall, not to
mention the office heating bills.

But look where
it has all led. Now we have an unfortunate American junior diplomat arrested in
Moscow in front of the cameras and paraded all over Russian TV wearing a daft
blonde wig, in the company of a number of embarrassed-looking superiors.

Ryan Fogle, said
to be a CIA agent, is accused by the Russians of ‘provocative actions in the
spirit of the Cold War’, or, more specifically, trying to recruit a Russian
informant.

The Russians
have always made very good spies. But when it comes to spy literature they are
a bit behind the curve. And their PR hasn’t improved since the days when GUM
was the only department store in Moscow and its windows displayed tins of
sardines and Rosa Klebb-brand lingerie.

Memo to the
Lubyanka: if you want people to believe your spy capture coup, forget the wigs.
Both of them. And the sunglasses. And the map and the knife. And the compass,
please. Watch the western movies more carefully – even in something as dated as
the James Bond franchise they use satnavs now.

In particular,
everyone is going to laugh at the notion that American spies present their
Russian informers with letters of contract. ‘We eagerly await the possibility
of working with you in the near future,’ indeed.

I don’t
remember that George Smiley’s Moscow Rules had anything about letters of
appointment for agents. The main methods of recruitment in the good old days
appear to have been blackmail and bribery, which are rarely conducted in
writing.

All this dreadfully
crude stuff just undermines the point you are trying to make about those evil
interfering Americans, whatever it might be. Probably along the lines of ha-ha,
you decadent USA, your spies are so stupid compared to our hot tottie Anna
Chapman, or something equally significant.

Perhaps the
Russians feel ignored now the world domination stakes of the Cold War have
declined to the point where most serious Russian threat comes from their
gangsters bumping each other off in London. Some innocent bystander might get
hurt one day.

The trouble is
that there is still a use for properly conducted spying. The Americans might
have captured the Boston bombers before it was too late if they had bothered to
listen more carefully to Moscow about suspicious Chechens.

American
interest seems to be pointed elsewhere. Very successful so in some cases.
Witness the superb Stuxnet coup, in which a computer worm that started off
alarming every technology geek in the western world turned out to be damaging
only when introduced into nuclear centrifuges in an Iranian bomb factory.

Perhaps there is
Washington activity in London too. We discover that the Bloomberg news agency
has been selling £13,000-a-year information terminals – sort of up-dated stock
market tickers – to the Governor of the Bank of England Sir Mervyn King and his
senior colleagues. Then the agency’s journalists have been looking at what Sir
Mervyn’s been looking at.

Just Bloomberg
journalists? Really?

In contrast with
adventures in Moscow, this trick is as safe as houses. If a journalist from
News International were to so much as ask for Hugh Grant’s mobile number, there
would be half a dozen dawn raids followed by the establishment of a 120-strong
Met Police detection team and, a year later, serious criminal charges.

Being that the
Bloomberg affair involves bankers, the City, and very large sums of money,
nothing criminal can have happened.

Our own boys and
girls are capable of pulling the odd stunt with technology when they put their
minds to it. A few years ago, before the Athens Olympics, the Greek government
felt it needed a new secure mobile phone network. It turned out that Vodafone,
who are based in Newbury, had just the thing they needed.

The new system
worked like a dream, throughout the Olympics, putting the Greek prime minister
in instant contact with his cabinet and his military, security and police
chiefs. And also MI6.

The Greeks were
rather angry when they found out, a couple of years later. They have probably
calmed down a bit now that they have other things to worry about.

I would like to
think there is still some properly applied spying going on behind the PR
puffery. There are certainly plenty of worthwhile targets.

The Security
Service could start by finding out, in advance of the last Premier League
fixtures, which Italian restaurant the Tottenham team plan to gather in on
Saturday evening.

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